The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm <comment><USER2> A few years after writing this I was fortunate enough to visit a restaurant in Christchurch that serves burgers by pneumatic tube:

[http://www.c1espresso.co.nz/#!pneumatic/caqp](http://www.c1espresso.co.nz/#!pneumatic/caqp)

We have the technology!

<comment><USER3> I really tried to visit [http://burrito.nyc.us.gov](http://burrito.nyc.us.gov). It was all a lie.

      ):

<comment><USER2> I'm so sorry. If it makes you feel any better, it got me too, earlier today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From "Then & Now: NYC's Pneumatic Tube Mail Network", [http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube- mai...](http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-mail- network/)

 _" Each tube could carry between 400 and 600 letters and traveled at 30-35 miles per hour. In its full glory, the pneumatic tubes covered a 27-mile route, connecting 23 post offices. This network stretched up Manhattan's east and west sides, from Bowling Green and Wall Street, all the way north to Manhattanville and East Harlem. Anecdotal stories indicate that the system may have extended into the Bronx, with sandwich subs reportedly being delivered via pneumatic tubes from a renown subway shop in the Bronx to downtown postal stations."_

</comment><comment><USER5> So some friends and I have a running joke/thing. Anytime someone goes to SF they are obligated to FedEx a standard tube filled with El Farolito carnitas super burritos back. A tube fits 5 IIRC and it works great. (This happens so infrequently I do not worry about it impacting my carbon footprint enough to the point I am judged in the afterlife.) It's not the same thing as a pneumatic tube, but it's the closest we could manage without talking to VCs. And SF-Manhattan is close enough to Alameda-Weehawken for me. Pro tip: no sour cream, add on remote end if desired and at all costs avoid getting your tube stuck in the mail room over a weekend.

<comment><USER6> How long does the trip take? Are they good to eat when they arrive?

<comment><USER7> It's certainly playing with fire, but I've never heard of anyone getting sick after eating a 24 hour old burrito stored at room temperature. This is assuming that it's a not a super burrito (no cheese, no sour cream, no avocado)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I never understood: once you freeze the burritos, isn't the freshness advantage essentially moot? You might as well just ship them in trucks to the frozen-foods aisles of NYC grocery stores.

<comment><USER9> You'd think so, but if you try the tunnel burritos you can really taste the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to begin.

> "Yet if you could open the airlocks and stare down its length with a > telescope, you would see airplanes on final approach to Newark Airport, > three thousand miles away!"

Newark Airport is in a solid southwest heading from Weehawken. Final approach is either from the north, south, or a western heading over Jersey City to Runway 29, still south and slightly west of Weehawken. A tunnel looking east would see skyscrapers in Manhattan. _Possibly_ air traffic from Laguardia, but it's unlikely, especially with pump infrastructure in the way.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

> To reduce drag on the burritos to a minimum, the tunnel must be kept in > near-vacuum with powerful pumps.

Yet a few paragraphs later, they say "Mail would frequently arrive singed or deformed from the intense heat and pressure." What is it? Vacuum or pressure?

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

> Furthermore, advances in electrical engineering meant that containers would > no longer have to be propelled by compressed gas. The burritos already came > conveniently wrapped in aluminum foil - it would be trivial to accelerate > them with powerful magnets.

The power required by these magnets to induce the Lenz effect in a burrito wrapper, let alone propel it, is too high for large-scale applications.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

> Under our feet are five miles of silt from the Rockies before you even get > to the first rock.

Not even close to true. Tecumseh Shale, for example, can be found about 100 feet deep in places.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

> At the tunnel exit, a final puff of air slows the burritos to a stop and > they are placed in insulated bags. These are whisked to a fleet of waiting > trucks, which pass through the Holland Tunnel (this time at a more stately > thirty-five miles per hour) and then onward to restaurants and cafeterias > throughout the five boroughs.

Why not the Lincoln Tunnel? It's actually in Weehawken! The traffic through Hoboken and Jersey City to the Holland is insane. Why didn't they just build the tunnel to Manhattan? It's a mile away!

<comment><USER2> The whole thing is meant to poke fun at a certain breathless pop-science writing style.

There's lots of other errors. I'm surprised you didn't hit me with the brachistochrone curve.

I am picturing you reading bedtime stories to your children, and interrupting to say "well ACTUALLY..."

<comment><USER11> I think they already know the whole deal is ludicrous, they're joking too, and they are gently trolling you.

Or so I hope, for the sake of my faith in humanity.

<comment><USER2> I too want to believe. But I've been on this site a while.

<comment><USER12> Move along now. No loitering!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can the hyperloop possibly compete with this?

</comment><comment><USER14> As an sf transplant in nyc... I'm dying for a good salsa bar. Damn. OH The humanity

<comment><USER15> You made the choice, now you suffer the consequences. Burritos till i die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This remains my favorite essay by Maciej, and a reason why I'm never completely sure how truthful he is in his other stories.

I've rarely laughed as hard as when this was read to me at my birthday one summer night after a few drinks. The sentence about the burritos "[tracing] graceful arcs into the East River, glowing like faint red sparks in the night" will stay in my heart for a long time.

<comment><USER2> I'm so happy you like this. I really do try to stick to the truth in things that aren't obvious put-ons!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good one! Regarding gravity train and when it was initially "invented":

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train

</comment><comment><USER18> For a second there...

</comment><comment><USER19> Boy, I dunno.</comment>


Venti: a new approach to archival storage (2002) - <AUTHOR> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/venti/venti.html <comment><USER2> The idea of a Merkle tree[0] is used in Git and Bup[1] actually splits files into ~8k blobs, using Git as its data store.

Edit: what would be the state-of-the-art Git store format ?

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree) [1]: [https://github.com/bup/bup](https://github.com/bup/bup)

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently discovered Ugarit and although I haven't used it at all, it traces its lineage back to Venti (and also Git).

Not sure how mature it is, but might interest some:

[https://www.kitten- technologies.co.uk/project/ugarit/doc/tru...](https://www.kitten- technologies.co.uk/project/ugarit/doc/trunk/README.wiki)

</comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat related, I posted this here some time ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7877328)

I do use venti outside of Plan 9 too. The CAS model is very simple, and the data is very simple to manage. Unfortunately, it screaks a lot compared to Plan 9, but it works, and I have daily versioning for all my files.

/edit: quoting on this site sucks, I gave up.

</comment><comment><USER5> GlusterFS offers WORM volumes. Volumes made available with NFS/SMB.

</comment><comment><USER6> Date: somewhere around late 2001 to early 2002.

The latest-dated reference is from 2001.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but how many modern file system solutions provide snapshots for all users. Fossil and Venti will do that for you.

<comment><USER5> ZFS, Btrfs do this with COW. NTFS (volume snapshot service) and ReFS makes it COW. LVM2 offers a new thinp COW based snapshot that could make this work for any filesystem.

Edit: And Apple's CoreStorage also has some kind of COW capability at least when used for "fusion" drives. And then Time Machine and OSTree are effectively COW as well. The trick here is how to make what's written, read- only and thus write once. Btrfs at least has the concept of read-only seed devices, which can be put together in sequence, but might need some work to make it fit better with this use case.

<comment><USER7> IIUC both ZFS and btrfs require that you be root to work with file system snapshots.

<comment><USER4> Solaris has a fine-grained privilege model where you can delegate any aspect of any dataset to any user. However, FreeBSD and Linux don't have this, so on those systems you have to be root to do snapshots.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see. I've only used ZFS on FreeBSD so I guess I'm missing out. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


State of the OpenVMS Port to x86_64 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/State_of_Port_20160906.pdf <comment><USER2> I have a bad habit where instead of doing something relevant I play with old stuff I read about but didn't have access to as a kid.

VMS always interested me since I first read about it in the jargon file. I recently found an alphaserver on craigslist and I just requested an openvms hobbyist license so I could play with it.

An octane running irix is another expression of this problem.

<comment><USER3> Nothing wrong with that, you simply suffer from retrocomputing.

Careful about the power bill though. Large SGI stuff (e.g. Onyx) can go in the kilowatt range under load, and an AlphaServer idles at around 200W last time I checked.

IT was no green back then :)

<comment><USER4> My ES40 (4 x 667MHz 21264s) consumes 16A @ 110V. Most 110V US circuits are 10A.

I blew at least three fuses between that and the RX5670 (4 x Itanium), which consumed a similar amount of power @ 110V.

<comment><USER5> On the upside, depending on where you live, you probably save a lot of money on heating... ;-)

<comment><USER6> Is there a EnergyGuide heating furnace efficiency score for the ES40?

<comment><USER7> Resistance heating is pretty poor compared to heat pumps.

<comment><USER6> That's the joke that I was trying to make.

<comment><USER5> I think I remember reading or overhearing that Intel's chips somewhere in the Pentium 4 era were more efficient at converting electricity to heat than a typical hotplate. (Ratio-wise, at least.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an old time OpenVMS user (on VAX DECstations first and on AlphaServer later) I'm looking forward to this.

I doubt it will ever come even remotely close to a "mainstream" OS, but Alpha to x86 is a much better migration path than Alpha to Itanium.

And yes, there are still many OpenVMS installs out there in the wild, from airport logistics to assembly lines, so this _may_ make sense from a financial standpoint (versus a complete software rewrite for Linux/AIX/whatever) - provided they can market it well enough to the old users.

<comment><USER8> Don't forget nuclear plants running PDP-11/VMS until 2050. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep_pdp11_until_2050/)

<comment><USER9> VMS never ran on the PDP-11. That article is talking about 2 different things (running PDP-11s and HPs stance on VMS).

<comment><USER10> Hard to find a comment by you not in oblivion but I'm trolling for nobody :

Former NSA staffer and famous whistleblower, William Binney, says the DNC hack was not done by Russia but by US Intelligence.

[http://investmentwatchblog.com/nsa-whistleblower-says-dnc- ha...](http://investmentwatchblog.com/nsa-whistleblower-says-dnc-hack-was-not- done-by-russia-but-by-u-s-intelligence/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work with an old DEC guy who co-wrote a book about the BLISS compiler back in the day. He thought it made a much better "portable assembly language" than C.

He also likes to talk about the binary compatibility on VMS; e.g., VAX binaries that run unchanged on Itanium. Unfortunately, that commitment to compatibility has wavered a bit since HP offshored VMS maintenance. We've had to work around some breaking changes recently.

If I'm understanding these slides correctly, AMD64 VMS would require recompiling VAX, Alpha, and Itanium applications from source. I kind of see a chicken-and-egg problem: application vendors won't port without demand, and customers won't adopt without applications.

<comment><USER12> DEC had a tool called VEST which was used to take native VAX binaries and convert them to run on Alpha AXP. It was very cool technology. A fair amount of the system utilities for OpenVMS on AXP were VESTed VAX binaries. I'm pretty sure the EDT editor was one of these.

The VEST technology could possibly be used to convert native VAX binaries to run on X86_64, I don't know for sure how the endian-ness would be dealt with.

<comment><USER11> The roadmap on the same site shows a "dynamic binary translator for Alpha and Itanium images" planned to be available with the general release ... in 2019!

[http://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20160906.pdf](http://vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20160906.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those itching to try, simh is capable of emulating a VAX and running OpenVMS (or NetBSD/vax) on them. One can also get a hobbyist license and media from HPE [https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548](https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548), [http://www.openvmshobbyist.com](http://www.openvmshobbyist.com)) and play around with it.

It is really quite a fascinating OS (I've had it running under a MicroVAX 4000/60 for fun -- and yes, I can truly say fun!) and feels quite modern even today.

</comment><comment><USER14> long live DEC OpenVMS, it's really rare to see an article on hacker news about OpenVMS, but it has happened before. long live DCL, ASTs. i started work in 2000, but was still able to play around with vax and alpha clusters, sometimes if i recall correctly, a mix of vax and alpha nodes in the same cluster. OpenVMS was such a stable operating system, by 2000, most of the good DEC engineers had left already for companies like Microsoft (Dave Cutler, etc), but that legacy code was still quite amazing. long live ZKO and DEC, i learned a lot from that job, great to see this coming, but not sure if it's still relevant these days with all my development on linux. could you imagine running this port on aws, like some customer migrating to the cloud all their legacy infrastructure? that would be such a niche market.

</comment><comment><USER15> I do believe that MACRO in the slides refers to MACRO-11, a PDP assembler. Or maybe MACRO-32, for VAX. In either case, they have been compiling this "assembly" language for Alpha (and now I guess Itanium) since VMS has run on that architecture.

<comment><USER16> That would be MACRO-32, the VAX assembler/assembly language dialect. As a considerable part of the VMS kernel is written in VAX assembly, they treat it as a high level language and compile it to Alpha, IA64 and now x86-64.

Other parts of the kernel are written in C (newer code) and BLISS (older code). See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLISS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/index.html](http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/computers/vaxen/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not translate the PDP-11 or VAX binaries to x86-64 and emulate the memory- mapped device interfaces? Seems like less work, and more likely to produce a cheap solution for legacy installations worrying about how to run an ancient critical application on old gear.

<comment><USER19> A lot of the old VAX installations are industrial control applications, the device interfaces are exactly the things you want to keep. You can buy new VAX-compatible machines with the old Digital I/O buses and cables today: [http://logical-co.com/product/ba23123-m9405-module- interconn...](http://logical-co.com/product/ba23123-m9405-module-interconnect- kit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have OpenVMS running under the SIMH emulator... It takes me back to the late 80's / early 90's. Hobbyist licenses are available for people who want to tinker. Fun stuff...

</comment><comment><USER21> Tip of the hat to Wendin, Inc. circa 1988.

$ show developer /user=steve_jones /source=linkedin /url=[https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejonesinwashington](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevejonesinwashington)

edit: corrected url

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting that they have a non-clang C front end. Did DEC have weird vendor- specifoc extensions to C?

<comment><USER16> Yes, see the appendices of [http://h41361.www4.hpe.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V40F_...](http://h41361.www4.hpe.com/docs/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V40F_PDF/AQTLTBTE.PDF)

The original VMS C compiler targeted a pre-ANSI "VAX C" dialect which had further differences. DEC C replaced it on the Alpha (I don't think it was backported to the VAX)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ugh. i switched from vms to unix in '88 because the telnet in vms was crappy. other than the wonderful help system, I never found VMS attractive.

<comment><USER24> VMScluster still blows away anything else. 20 years ago it was doing what you can only now do with vMotion now... And being able to set a working set per job... And a coherent story for cross-language libraries... I could go on. VMS was a technological tour de force that has yet to be rivalled.

<comment><USER23> What cluster features were in VMScluster that weren't also in TruCluster? To me the interesting part of TruCluster was the shared filesystem and the application failover. That said, I work for a company now that eschews that kind of tight coupling, because it's expensive to scale the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looking forward to it!

</comment><comment><USER26> Call me when they free it.

<comment><USER3> Why? Not everything is free and open source. In fact, most of the operating systems used outside the "general-purpose" Linux realm are not (e.g. OS400, z/OS, z/TPF, AIX, Solaris, NonStop, QNX, vxWorks... even Windows Server).

That said, if you're really interested, HP offers free hobbyist licenses for non-commercial use of OpenVMS, with access to the OS and compilers and usable on real hardware or SIMH.

<comment><USER27> Could you please send me the link where it says that I can get the hobbyist license. I want to give it a try.

<comment><USER28> I got licenses for my MicroVAXen some years ago. I haven't powered either of them on in a long time though...

<comment><USER29> FYI, hobbyist licenses expire after a year. You'll have to get new ones. Still free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online.Net Ticket Support Is Ridiculous - <AUTHOR> https://v.teknik.io/v/WJIUR <comment><AUTHOR> As a note, read from the bottom up (their ticket history is backwards, when I get the time I will fix the screenshots and order them more properly.</comment>


Oracle to Close DynDNS - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-platform/dyn-upgrade-and-integration-with-oracle-cloud-infrastructure <comment><USER2> I was a happy Dyn customer for years but when I got this email, I immediately transferred my domain to Amazon Route 53 (consolidating most of my infrastructure in one cloud provider).</comment>


Mathematical Literacy: A necessary skill for the 21st century - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.plos.org/scied/2013/02/11/mathematical-literacy-a-necessary-skill-for-the-21st-century/ <comment><USER2> It's a shame that the author doesn't try to clarify the difference between arithmetic and mathematics. An important distinction? Absolutely -- people who dislike arithmetic may well have substantial math potential, and there are calculators and computers to do the arithmetic.

This is not to say that arithmetic ability isn't useful for everyday transactions, but there are many people who, because they dislike, or have no aptitude for, arithmetic, end up missing out on mathematics, which is a different pursuit with its own requirements and rewards. Now that's a shame.

<comment><USER3> I fail to see how one is going to master any branch of mathematics if arithmetic is a major obstacle.

<comment><USER2> > I fail to see how one is going to master any branch of mathematics if > arithmetic is a major obstacle.

I can teach algebra and Calculus to a classroom of students without requiring anyone to do arithmetic. I would simply say, "Bring your calculators."

There's no doubt that a facility with arithmetic is a very useful skill. But for many, it represents an obstacle on the road to mathematics, including some very useful and enriching mathematics. I think this will change in the future, as people become more comfortable with calculating devices.

There was a similar change many centuries ago, at a time when the ability to memorize information was evidence of education. Then cheap print became available. Shortly thereafter the ability to read replaced the ability to memorize the teacher's words, as primary evidence of an education.

I think the same thing will happen with arithmetic and mathematics -- they will increasingly be seen as separate, independent skills.</comment></comment></comment>


The algebra and calculus of algebraic data types - <AUTHOR> https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/three/algebra-and-calculus-of-algebraic-data-types <comment><USER2> That's fun and a bit surprising, but maybe it shouldn't be. I'm reminded that Dana Scott with Christopher Strachey showed that by using lattices or complete partial orders with a bit of topology to model graphs of possible computations of a program you could, just as in analysis, define least upper and lower bounds and a notion of continuity to derive a construction of limit for a computation which is analogous to a limit in analysis. They called this model a domain. That bit of of math is the basis of denotational semantics of programming languages and is necessary because sets are largely sufficient as the basis for algebra and analysis but not for programs which have evils like partial functions, side effects and variable assignment. I believe that Christopher Strachey with Scott also introduced the formal notions of sum, product and recusive types. They also showed how definitions or models of recursive types and functions could be well founded through their construction of limits on domains. An early tech report on it can be found here:

[https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/3228/PRG06.pdf](https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/3228/PRG06.pdf)

and here's a more recent free book from David Schmidt on the topic:

[http://people.cs.ksu.edu/~schmidt/text/DenSem-full- book.pdf](http://people.cs.ksu.edu/~schmidt/text/DenSem-full-book.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Another interesting area of program semantics that hasn't seen much attention afaik is in the design of languages whose programs form some algebraic structure.

My area of research is concatenative programming, where concatenation of two programs denotes the composition of those programs, and the empty program is the identity function (on the "program state", which is usually a stack). That means that the syntax and semantics of the language both form monoids, and there's a homomorphism from the syntax onto the semantics.

Several years ago, I was trying to come up with languages with other more interesting algebraic structures, so you could apply theorems from those structures to programs. A particular challenge is a language whose structure forms a _nontrivial_ ring¹, in particular a Euclidean ring—then you could find the greatest common divisor of two programs, and because a Euclidean ring is a unique factorisation domain, you could also factor a program into _prime subprograms_. I was fascinated by what that might mean and whether it could be useful.

Unfortunately, it was that "nontrivial" aspect that I could never get past. The language always ended up insufficiently powerful to express anything of interest, its algebraic structure was trivial (e.g. there's only one program), or it ended up having a weaker structure (e.g. an idempotent semiring). Chris Pressey also worked on this concept a bunch around 2007, and produced some results like Cabra² and Burro³, but ran into similar dead ends like Potro⁴.

¹ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(mathematics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_\(mathematics\))

² [http://catseye.tc/article/Languages.md#cabra](http://catseye.tc/article/Languages.md#cabra)

³ [http://catseye.tc/article/Languages.md#burro](http://catseye.tc/article/Languages.md#burro)

⁴ [https://github.com/catseye/Chrysoberyl/blob/master/article/L...](https://github.com/catseye/Chrysoberyl/blob/master/article/List%20of%20Unfinished%20Interesting%20Esolangs.md#potro)

<comment><USER4> This algebraic approach to program semantics is basically how categorical semantics works. The syntactic equational theory of the simply typed lambda calculus with pairs, for example, is that of the "free" cartesian closed category. It can be mapped (in a way that respects the cartesian closed structure) into any cartesian closed category, giving you a semantics.

A monoid can be seen as a one-object category (the monoid elements are the morphisms on that object, and the monoid operator is morphism composition), so perhaps concatenative languages have categorical semantics too. (Although it seems like the semantics of "quote", or whatever [ foo bar baz ] is in forth, might make things a little interesting - ie. require more structure than a monoid homomorphism. I expect you really want cartesian closed categories, and quote is probably curry or apply.)

<comment><USER3> I don't know how concatenative languages fit into category theory—I would guess Cartesian closed categories are the place to start, but that's not really my area of expertise.

Maybe you can offer some insight if I tell you that the quotation _syntax_ "[ … ]" in a concatenative language corresponds to lambda abstraction:

        e : a
        </comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
        [ e ] : ∀s. s → s × a

And the quotation _operator_ "quote", which takes a value on the stack and returns it quoted, corresponds to eta-expansion (or lifting lambda abstraction into a term, if you like) and has the type:

        quote : ∀sa. s × a → s × (∀t. t → t × a)

Generally the standard Turing-complete basis in concatenative calculus is the following set of combinators:

        compose : ∀rstu. r × (s → t) × (t → u) → r × (s → u)
        swap : ∀sab. s × a × b → s × b × a
        drop : ∀sa. s × a → s
        dup : ∀sa. s × a → s × a × a
        quote : ∀sa. s × a → s × (∀t. t → t × a)
        apply : ∀st. s × (s → t) → t

(Although you can get away with fewer if they're equivalent in power.)

The first three correspond to the standard B, C, K, and W combinators from combinatory logic, which give you all the substructural rules from logic—swapping is exchange, dropping is weakening, and copying is contraction. Without swap/drop/dup, it's equivalent to ordered linear lambda calculus, which can be interpreted in any category (since it's just B and I); what are the categorical equivalents of linear (BC), affine (BCK), ordered (BKW), and relevant (BCW) logics?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is almost identical to the study of combinatorial species ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_species))

</comment><comment><USER6> If you like this you'll want to look at "semiring programming" (just search on that phrase) and Categorical Programming, e.g.: "Compiling to categories" Conal Elliott [http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to- categories/](http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/)

<comment><USER7> I found the paper linked inside the article very interesting. It explores (one possible) meaning of negative and rational types. I'm still going through it:

[https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~sabry/papers/rational.pdf](https://www.cs.indiana.edu/~sabry/papers/rational.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nat = Nat + 1 does end up being meaningful: since ultimately the numbers that fall out (e.g. Bool = 2) end up describing the sizes of sets, an interpretation of Nat is some infinite cardinal (aleph-null), which is the size of the set of natural numbers.

<comment><USER9> That makes sense, but this case shows that apparently arbitrary algebraic simplifications aren't allowed because otherwise we could subtract Nat from each side and have trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A cool aspect is how this algebra/calculus sheds light that maps(/dictionary/associative-arrays) have an equivalent cardinality to functions and that they are in many ways the same.

<comment><USER11> In Clojure, maps can be called as functions (equivalent to `get`). This isomorphism is also reflected in K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I once tried to take the Taylor series idea further and define the "cosine" of a type as the Taylor expansion of cos(x), but didn't get anywhere with it.

Can you do anything else weird with ADTs?

<comment><USER13> Huh. Thinking about this example I'm confused, because the power series for exp(x) looks like the type for unordered lists of x: e.g. the term for lists of length three is x^3, and if you ignore order you get x^3/3!. The cosine is almost the same as the even terms of this series, but with a minus sign on every other term.

What confuses me (besides what to make of the minus sign) is that the type of sets of x ought to be 2^x -- that is, x -> Bool -- because it's isomorphic to the characteristic function of a set, and a function type is an exponential ([https://bartoszmilewski.com/2015/03/13/function- types/](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2015/03/13/function-types/)). But 2^x differs from exp(x) by a constant factor. So I seem to be messing with surface-level analogies without real understanding.

<comment><USER7> You're comparing unordered lists of unlimited length with subsets.

To define a subset of x, you simply choose whether any element is present or not:

type Set x = x → Bool

Cardinality: 2^x

Defining an unordered list (of unlimited length, with possible repetitions) with algebraic data types is harder, if at all possible. Especially when you consider what "unordered" should mean in the face of repetitions. I wouldn't be surprised if it was not possible, or if the expansion turned out to have a strange cardinality such as e^x

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I forgot about repetitions of the same element. How could I miss that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One thing I've been wondering is how to interpret the function types `Void -> a` and `a -> Void`, where Void is the uninhabited type (unique up to isomorphism). The number of inhabitants of those types should be |a|^0=1 and 0^|a|=0, respectively, but what does that mean? In real world, function(s) of type a->Void certainly exist, such functions being those that diverge (loop forever or halt via some non-local means).

<comment><USER15> `Void` being the uninhabited type, in the light of the Curry-Howard isomorphism stands for a false proposition.

`a -> Void` get interpreted as "not a" or "from a follows contradiction" or equivalently "a is uninhabited". Combinatorially it's `0 ^ a` which for non- empty a is zero but is equal to 1 when a is empty (0^0=1). In other words there are no functions of type `a -> Void` for non-empty a and there's exactly one such function for uninhabited a (id :: Void -> Void).

`Void -> a` is interpreted "from falsehood, anything (follows)" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion). Combinatorially a^0 = 1 for all a so there's exactly one such function. An easy way to define it is by induction on Void (which has no cases and you're done).

<comment><USER16> Yeah, Void makes for great for inductive definitions ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very neat insights into data type differentiation! Minor nitpick: the article uses

        data Unit = Unit

but the Haskell standard Prelude already has the empty tuple type (), with single element (), functioning as the standard unit type.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does distributivity hold? _a x (b + c)_ = _a x b + a x c_

<comment><USER3> Up to isomorphism, yes. That is, you can write a pair of functions that are mutual inverses that witness the fact that those two types are isomorphic:

        distl :: (a, Either b c) -> Either (a, b) (a, c)
        distl (a, b_c) = case b_c of
          Left b -> Left (a, b)
          Right c -> Right (a, c)

        factl :: Either (a, b) (a, c) -> (a, Either b c)
        factl ab_ac = case ab_ac of
          Left (a, b) -> (a, Left b)
          Right (a, c) -> (a, Right c)

With the "TypeOperators" feature enabled (and "UnicodeSyntax" for pretty arrows and such, because why not), you can write it more literally:

        type (×) a b = (a, b)
        infixl 7 ×

        type (+) a b = Either a b
        infixl 6 +

        distl ∷ a × (b + c) → a × b + a × c
        factl ∷ a × b + a × c → a × (b + c)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What happened to Code Words that are not new issues?</comment>


Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars <comment><USER2> So, I served in the military and happen to have studied Arabic and Arab culture quite a bit. Furthermore, I am kind of a military history buff.

The core strength of our military is that we put a lot of power in the hands of career NCOs, who are literate and often carry more knowledge in their heads than the boot lieutenants nominally in charge. We even have a Warrant Officer track for technically minded NCOs.

The no-career-NCO Soviet Union style military which most of the Arab nations have embraced is a serious hindrance, and it's notable that Russia did away with it in 2008, leading to better military unit performance in recent conflicts.

I would guess that the Soviet military system was originally adopted to balance the need to utilize an illiterate uneducated peasantry while at the same time denying them any real power or opportunity to move up the social ladder.

It is interesting to me that the system persists in many of the U.S.' allies today.

<comment><USER3> It's my understanding that the Soviet style organization is basically a continuation of the normal Soviet ultra-centralization-of-everything policies that extended from the military organization to centralized hot water boilers in Soviet cities. The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy. In later years the number was no doubt near 100%.

It works to a point for command and control, but greatly reduces tactical flexibility and decision making. As we've also learned from the GWoT is that centralization makes it easier to disable an organization and that distribution of concerns can enable forces to be much more resilient to losses.

<comment><USER4>
      WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for
      Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy

Sure, but I'm guessing that most of the tens of millions who died from starvation under Stalin were illiterate. That skews the counters a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a bit silly that the author doesn't make a link to an obvious parallel: South Vietnam's completely dysfunctional military. Mistrust at all levels? Check. Lack of consideration for the lives of conscripts? Check. Lack of cooperation between units? Check. Rampant corruption, disappearing supplies? Check. Legitimate fear of military coups? Check. Promotion based on contacts, not competence. Check.

Essentially this is a pathology of the militaries in countries were the government lacks legitimacy, where survival of the most paranoid is the rule. The paramount example of this is Saddam Hussein, who would deliberately promote incompetent idiots to the highest positions to protect his own ass and surrounded himself with sycophants.

Mussolini's Italy is another good example, and so is the Iran of Mohammad Reza Shah.

<comment><USER6> But before being too smug about these "stupid" regimes, it is shocking that American leadership could not see these problems. That you can't win a war with a weak colonial puppet regime. So many American policies have blown up because one tried to prop up regimes with zero legitimize whether South Vietnam, the Shah of Iran or leader of Cuba before Castro.

I also keep wondering why a tyrant like Hitler seemed to have an awful lot of talented people running stuff. Why did Hitler not replace brilliant military commanders with loyal idiots?

It is one of the ironies, that the Nazi regime seen as as being built on cadaver decipline had a lot of independent decision making at the lower levels.

<comment><USER7> Hitler did start to replace/subvert his highest ranking military staff, and it's a big reason why he lost the war. Early on he did not micromanage the various theaters, which is partly why the Wermacht did so well early on. As the war went on, several of Hitler's best commanders were removed for railing against his out of touch orders.

Perhaps the best example of a promotion which detracted from the war effort was putting Hermann Goring in charge of the Luftwaffe.

You are right though that at the lower levels, the Wermacht could think flexibly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those interested in a historical example of a dysfunctional military, I recommend reading: [http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/07.html](http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov12/07.html)

Small passage to whet your interest:

>It is also essential to mix all the nationalities together in divisions, regiments and battalions. If one regiment contains too many Lithuanians and another too many Tatars, this must result from a slip-up by some military bureaucrat. The punishment for such mistakes is harsh. The movement of such colossal numbers of men takes up two whole months. Surprisingly, the machine works extremely smoothly, rather like a sausage machine-all sorts of pieces of meat, some onions, some rusks, and some garlic are put in at one end and out of the other come solidly compressed rolls of well-mixed human material.

The author is an excellent writer and the rest of this book is worth a read. Some facts are a little iffy, but I believe that's mostly it was published prior to the Soviet Union opening up its archives/making primary sources readily available.

<comment><USER9> The classic comment on the Soviet military was that units improve markedly after they've been banged around a bit in combat. This is typical of militaries that don't train as they fight. When they actually do fight, they get pounded into something that works. WWII was a long, slow slog for the Soviet army, so they had time for that to happen.

There are a few Arab military organizations that work. Hezbollah is respected by US special ops organizations. They're tactically innovative; they've deployed squads with three RPG gunners and one rifleman, which gave them enough firepower to take on Israeli armor.

<comment><USER10> Using RPG's in threes is classic ww2 tactics - your best shot hangs back whist the first two engage simutaiously.

The idea is your best shot has a chance of rescuing the situation if the first two don't get a Kill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've no experience with Arab militaries, but have worked in the Middle East and with Arab telecoms companies. Quite a few of the anecdotes and observations in the article ring true, in particular as they relate to attitudes to training, power hierarchies and sharing information. In particular the politics of test scores in technical training for trainees of different ranks for a Saudi company was a difficult issue which meant in the end we had to fudge it completely. So while I can't verify much of what is said here, enough of it matches my own experiences that it seems pretty credible.

</comment><comment><USER12> Author wrote a follow up in 2013.

[https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/23981/uploads](https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/23981/uploads)

<comment><USER13> Knowing nearly nothing about military culture in the US, let alone other countries, it would be interesting to hear a similarly well thought-out argument from the Egyptian side. I'm sure through their eyes our military culture must seem inferior. Otherwise they would have changed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the political line of this website ? I've read different articles and it seems to lean towards far-right opinions

<comment><USER15> What would that matter? It's the arguments which count, not what the person who wrote them "really thinks".

<comment><USER16> Understanding the typical biases of a given source can allow you to better watch for certain flaws in their arguments.

<comment><USER17> And also prompts reader biases and red herrings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to be the third HN post of this article, previous ones: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976227) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476130)

It's an interesting article of course, and now it seems to generate more discussion (I read it at one of the previous times.)

<comment><USER19> Third time?!! This makes me wonder about the reasons for the interest in Arabs specifically. This is propaganda meant to be shoved down the throats of the gullible western citizen and many fall for it. It is spread by people with Zionist inclination to keep these citizens, specifically in the US and in the general western nations (I am a Canadian from an Arab Palestinian background), in the service of the Zionists. Many would be laughing to read this but I consider, especially the US citizens, as much occupied by Zionism as my people in Palestine.

Back to the topic: "Arabic-speaking armies have been generally ineffective in the modern era." Well you can stop right after this sentence, the rest is uninteresting as it is talking about "armies" which went into war in 1973. But if we scratch the word army and ask the question in the title "Why Arabs Lose Wars" and look back just at the recent wars Arabs, the people not the armies _, fought, you would have a completely different picture and get a completely different answer. Like myself, you don 't have to be a military expert, to reach that conclusion. Just go back to the war against Lebanon in 2006. The effectiveness of the guerrilla fighter of Hizbolla would make the Navy Seals envious. Look back at the wars against the besieged Gaza strip - the largest prison in the world. Just watch the progress in the effectiveness of the fighter of Hamas (who are besieged by the Zionists as well as the Camp David regime in Egypt). Just look at the map and see how arduous it is for them to smuggle their rockets for thousands of miles and still they succeed. How did they fight in 2008? 2012? 2014? Go and look at Youtube and compare the effectiveness of the Arab fighter with the Zionist one.

Why Arabs Lose Wars? The only way to win against Arabs is complete destruction of their cities from afar just like the Americans did to the city of Fallujah, the Zionists to the Shujayia neighbourhood in Gaza, to the city of Bent Jbeil in South Lebanon. If you put techologies aside and just compare soldier to soldier, courage to courage, there is no match. Do you know any nation in history or across the planet that had so many people ready to pull a trigger and sacrifice himself or herself for his nations freedom? You might say that's terrorism but that's beside the point. Actually the majority of those sacrificed themselves (from ISIS, to ALQEDA) to the service of Saudi Arabia (the tool of the US) and for it's own wars in Afganistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria (all wars orchestrated by the US).

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- _ these armies are just tools of governments all of whom from Morocoo to Iraq are friends the western governments.

</comment><comment><USER20> An amazingly detailed record of military operations. Very well researched and well written. The objectivity of the overall tone adds credence.

</comment><comment><USER21> For those interested, Ken Pollack's "Arabs at War" contains a lot of good material. He picks a number of nations in the region and discusses how well they've done in various regional wars over the latter half of the 20th century (right up until the first gulf war).</comment>


This Really is Big Brother: The Leak Nobody's Noticed - <AUTHOR> http://digbysblog.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/this-really-is-big-brother-leak-nobodys.html <comment><USER2> These requirements for pairing and that everyone working in sensitive intelligence work will now have to spy and tattle on their fellow workers is interesting in that it includes the Peace Corps in the directive. Peace Corps being added to the list of organizations that have to spy on each other for disclosure of classified information is interesting since in 1996 the white house announced that the CIA had not been using the Peace Corp for spying for over 20 years. Currently the Peace Corps requires applicants to promise they have never worked for the CIA. Not the NSA though, other intelligence agencies, or subcontractors of the CIA. Just directly for the CIA.

[http://www.peacecorps.gov/jobs/workingpc/eligibility/](http://www.peacecorps.gov/jobs/workingpc/eligibility/)

[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peace_Corps](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peace_Corps)

[http://clinton6.nara.gov/1996/07/1996-07-17-press- briefing-b...](http://clinton6.nara.gov/1996/07/1996-07-17-press-briefing-by- mike-mccurry.html)

Peace Corps being a front for US military and intelligence operations has been called a myth, but including them in this directive about classified information is going to smash the claim this is really a myth.

<comment><USER3> When I see _the freaking Education Department_ on the same list I have to wonder if something else isn't going on. Where is national security implicated there? For that matter, the Social Security Administration?

Now, there's good reason to suppress certain types of leaks from those organizations, they have a lot of private data on Americans (Obamacare put all government guaranteed etc. student loans going forward into the government, and a quick skim of Wikipedia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_States)) indicates the DoEducation is naturally involved).

But that's not been a problem as long as I can remember, so I somehow doubt that's the intention of this insanely broad program. As I've mentioned in other akin discussions, I remember Nixon, and this feels like Nixon to the Nth degree.

<comment><USER4> Its important to understand that from _some people 's perspective,_ the whole point of Federally funded education is indoctrination. In which case it would be very important to identify those who are, "frustrat[ed] with co-workers or the organization."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another example of authority protecting itself by invoking national security scares, patriotism, etc.

Quite disgusting that the idea of outing internal wrong doing or failure is some how helping enemies. Its not the outing that helps enemies, its the wrong doing that help enemies.

Besides, "what has the government got to hide"...... Yeah, fecking loads, just like we all have!!!! Difference is, we individuals have the right to make mistakes and, well, be human, but when a government does it, it has no right to hide. None.

Whistle blowing IS a duty, NOT treason. Treating decent citizens as the enemy is treason. In a "democracy", the people are the country, not the government.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a very chilling article. One element of the fallout of Snowden's escapade will be that private industry will be required to participate in and be a part of the same security policies; and this will be true of companies of all sizes and in all industries.

Right now you think of responsible positions dealing directly with mission critical information as being those where a security clearance is required. But if this trend continues it will soon be hard to find ANY job that pays reasonable wages and does not require a security clearance. Hotel maids, busboys, janitors on up the scale.

And let's be clear; this would be welcomed by many employers because it provides legitimacy to a whole panoply of abusive practices.

It will also have other subtle chilling effects on our ability to innovate as a country. Does your startup make technology with security implications or applications? Are you going to turn down a meeting from In-Q-Tel? If you take a contract to supply data management tools to the DOE, and one of the conditions is that people on the project must have some specific level of background check? You can pass a background check now; but what if they interview someone who hates you? Or worse, if the person who is conducting and grading the background check wants to fail you; with career ending consequences if they succeed...

This is a very ugly thing that is loose and growing now; it will touch each and every one of us who is actively involved in the economic life of America.

<comment><USER7> You have missed it, but private industry was already required to participate in governmental security policies long ago, when we began to privatize intelligence work to companies like Booz Allen. It shouldn't be surprising that the government will make compliance to its security policies a condition of this kind of contracting.

I don't see any reason to think that random maids at La Quinta in Little Rock, AR are going to need security clearances.

<comment><USER6> The point I was trying to make is that there are some powerful forces that will drive the expansion of "security culture" far beyond what seems reasonable to us now.

The .gov has always required contractors working on sensitive matters to have clearances. But the point I'm focussing on is the broad expansion of what qualifies as "security sensitive information".

And maids have physical access to rooms where people may be storing both personal, corporate and government information; it's easy to imagine someone making an argument that they should be subject to a criminal records check and possibly more stringent requirements for the luxury suites...

Especially since the security process gives management extreme leverage in labor negotiations and ensures that there is an absolute power imbalance between employees and employers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This started since Wikileaks. Remember when they wouldn't allow government employees to even read Wikileaks-related articles on Facebook, and risked being fired if they were sharing them?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?_r=0)

How is he able to say that info is _still_ classified after it was made public? I thought that once a classified document is leaked to the press and made public, it becomes public knowledge and can't be called classified anymore. Did that law change in the past few years or something?

<comment><USER9> No, absolutely the opposite. Only way a classified document becomes unclassified is when they say it's unclassified. In fact, often times they can't even say something that is classified is classified. You're just supposed to report it to your security officer and then they send it up the chain of command. If you have the ability to yank it down, you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't say _nobody_ has noticed, the right of center blogs I follow or maybe Drudge linked to this. Those of you who follow the MSM can tell us if it's getting any coverage there.

Side note: you really know this is out of hand when the _Department of Education_ has such a program. _Really_ hard to see any national security implications of leaking there....

<comment><USER10> It's all quite surreal, isn't it? At least people seem to be waking up. Bravo to HN for keeping up the coverage and not letting these outrageous revelations fade to a whimper.

<comment><USER3> Surreal? Perhaps.

For me, it reifies all I learned Nth hand about things like The Big Lie. Growing up and studying WWII history I had to accept that it worked, but I never really understood _how_ until ... hmmm, went to college in 1979, read/skimmed the _Boston Globe_ that my student group had a subscription to and e.g. saw how much it lied through omission. The 21st Century has taken this to the Nth degree in the US.

That was when I switched to really detailed study of the Protracted Conflict (the Bolsheviks vs. the world) and it was e.g. easy to understand what the big deal about revolutionary truth vs. bourgeois truth was about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> << A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of "reportable" suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. >>

Certainly the _only_ plausible explanation that salaried gov employees are working overtime is that they are spies -- at least we can all agree on this.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like the more draconian and restrictive the rules for TLA employees get, the more TLA work ends up getting done by outside contractors whose chief qualification to do it is that they aren't bound by stifling TLA restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unquestionably disturbing. Imagine what hasn't been revealed to us yet.

</comment><comment><USER9> what's the old wives tail go? Throw a frog in boiling water and he'll jump right out. Put the same frog in a pot but slowly raise the temperature and he'll boil. Slowly and surely they'll attempt to chip away at our rights for our own protection in a misguided attempt to make their lives and duties easier to perform.

<comment><USER13> Also, a frog is smart enough to jump out of the water irl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The world is turning to shit.

<comment><USER15> It already happened, but now people are starting to recognize the smell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The worst bit is the one that says that you are supposed to turn yourself and others in for failing to report reasonable suspicions.

Let loose a directive like that in a large bureaucracy, and the guaranteed result is a lot of CYA behavior. Which, ironically, will lessen how much information flows.

<comment><USER17> That's exactly the environment in my country in the 40's to mid 70's. You were obliged to inform the state of suspicious activities of your fellow citizens (things like reading the wrong sort of books or indulging in private gatherings) and were promptly compensated when you did so, whether you were being truthful or just really didn't like your neighbor. The infamous PIDE (secret police) is considered one of the most effective police forces in history, partially because of these sorts of tactics and how they managed to creep their way into every aspect of society. This is not something I'm proud to be associated with our history.

Of course that was dictatorship era Portugal. More than 40 years ago. I wasn't even born. But things have a way to come around again, one way or another, when we let ourselves get too comfortable and forget history or just trust too much on the competence of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is > having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of > social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before > it even gets to that point," said a senior Pentagon official, who requested > anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Looks like there's some senior Pentagon officials who have a peer they can snitch on.

</comment><comment><USER19> >"Hammer this fact home, ...punish those who fail to report their security suspicions"

Not Gotwin, but STASI Law. Here, today, is mom's good ol' apple pie USA.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see a propoganda machine at work. As far as I'm concerned, Obama is still the best president we have had in my adult life. He makes decisions based on reason and not belief. This is bad for politics as usual and this is why this slander campaign exists. Obama is not communist, Muslim, a dictator or anything like that. I am really surprised that even hacker news readers are being infected by right wing propoganda. When did it become cool to be a conservative? Please don't let fear enable an abandonement of logic. I operate off of proof and bottom line is, most of the allegations against Obama cannot be proven with facts but only hearsay. What I see is logical people being turned into the sheep they once despised.

<comment><USER21> Do you see the 4th Amendment in tatters? Is that the propaganda machine at work? It seems like there's plenty of blame for both sides of the aisle and blindly defending the Administration with platitudes seems counterproductive.

<comment><USER20> The constitution has been in trouble for a long time. There has been a consistent degradation. Obama absolutely did not set these programs into motion, most of these secret programs are relics from the war on terror that fear enabled. Do I see a degradation in the 4th? Sure as hell I have but it's been happening for a long time. Now your pissed about it because the media tells you so. This is the right wing fear factory at work.

<comment><USER21> Some people have been upset for awhile, and many of them now see the potential for change given the increased visibility of the issues. Personally, I'm not angry because of what the media tells me. If anything, I'm more frustrated with what they don't report. But mostly I'm frustrated because our government seems comfortable disregarding our rights at will. That's not a partisan issue, nor is it the media hype factory at work. Framing it as such is deeply counterproductive.

<comment><USER20> I agree with your sentiments but to not recognize that there are political agendas at work is not only counterproductive but also extremely naive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hexayurt Project: Free Hardware Housing for the World - <AUTHOR> http://hexayurt.com/ <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm Vinay, the hexayurt guy, a Hacker News regular, also the release coordinator for Ethereum. You might remember me from a post I did about Ethereum recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9977146)

I'll be around if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> I just watched one of your youtube/talks, and you address the rural-vs-cities issue by saying half of everyone lives rural and its much harder to solve cities so its a place to start.

But as the suburbs have taught us, sprawl is incredibly costly. Raising the standard of living for spread out peoples is harder because by definition its going to involve more transport energy cost and less economies of scale.

Also, at an almost philosophical sense, the single-family dwelling is itself a symptom of the problem. Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that. Shared walls mean shared lives, or more importantly, acknowledge the fact that we have shared lives and need to make the best of it.

I don't think we solve this via 1-unit structures housing <10 people a pop. And history shows that hundreds-unit structures over did it. How do we create cheap, open-source 10 - 100 unit, 2 - 6 floor, structures. Something that could actually go in those slums you mention (which these yurts would get destroyed in).

Anyway hope this didn't come off too critical, I really appreciate that you're even working on this problem and presenting it so clearly.

<comment><USER4> > Castle doctrine and every-man-is-an-island and all that.

Careful. You're fighting millenia of human nature here. That typically doesn't end well.

<comment><USER5> You think single-family homes are human nature?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a great AMA from the inventor for anyone interested - [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2dnfyn/i_am_the_inven...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2dnfyn/i_am_the_inventor_of_the_hexayurt_made_for/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see any discussion on that page about how this project helps house "the world" (which I assume to mean the developing world). It looks like the only places this has been used is in burning man, and there is no discussion of plans to deploy or sell them elsewhere.

<comment><USER2> It's been built in Haiti, Africa, Sri Lanka - test units, results positive. Getting over the hump on a deployment with refugees living in one (rather than the odd aid worker / volunteer) is taking time.

There's also this: [http://files.howtolivewiki.com/somalia_or_sudan.mp4](http://files.howtolivewiki.com/somalia_or_sudan.mp4) I found the video on a search, and have not discovered who made it or what the story is, but it's clearly the kind of diffusion we've always hoped for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think you're doing an epic job, keep up the good work.

As for suggestions: I think that you should recognize that the entities who are most likely to be able to deploy hexayurt broadly for humanitarian reasons (air drops, etc) are established businesses, well-funded startup companies, or individuals and groups who are in some way tightly coupled to the larger business community. Although these may groups vary on a diversity of issues, they all pretty much share one thing in common: they either

A. identify with what you would call a "statist" ideology or B. benefit financially from being perceived as not opposing the prevailing social norms of the local business community with regard to recognizing the state.

Therefor they are very likely weary of association with any project who's leader argues for a dramatic reform of those community standards (no matter how rational those underlying arguments may be).

My suggestion to you as someone who recognizes the enormous potential benefit of hexayurt technology is for you to perhaps adopt a softer approach towards corporate america and startup culture in general. Perhaps this approach could highlight the potential for corporate entities to rapidly catalyze positive externalities while generating strong network effects by leveraging a technology with an architecture that could make an impact globally via a relatively small pool of capital. To me it seems likely that the motivation for this kind of an outreach project might stem from the ability to rapidly surface a branding event by generating a humanitarian "PR wave" and then surfing it. This overall approach could serve as a mechanism for expanding global relationships, enhancing brand visibility in foreign markets, and even facilitating entre into new markets.

As it currently stands any corporation contemplating research into the deployment of a hexayurt grid as a humanitarian project faces several challenges. One challenge is that they must first somehow leverage a PR firm to figure out how to rebrand the underlying technology in order to separate the positive humanitarian PR from the negative PR stemming from the fact that the project was born out of a libertarian or anarchist social milieu, burning man, etc.

Another challenge is how to motivate other businesses to join in to see how far this can be developed and safeguarded all while fostering business relationships and strengthening brand identity in emerging markets.

TLDR: If you feel that corporatism is a problem, then perhaps instead of trying to attack that snake with a club, you could somehow tame it into consuming it's own tail like the mythological ouroboros.

<comment><USER2> This is a Hard Problem.

I could have taken the politics out in one of 99 ways, but I did not, and I'm willing to sacrifice 5 or even 10 years of hexayurt growth to keep the politics in.

The reason is simple: I want to politically organize the people who grow up in hexayurt refugee camps, getting their education over wifi and dreaming of a better, fairer world. So if I sell out my core values now to reach the refugees faster, I'm going to have a vastly less powerful offer of aid when I finally arrive there.

It's a very dark calculus, but the years of active sabotage that I've faced from aid organizations like UNHCR and Red Cross blocking the hexayurt's participation in testing programmes and similar bureaucratic interference have convinced me that the only way out of this mess is to disintermediate UNHCR and the Red Cross - to route around them as dark legacy - and to have refugees directly raise funds themselves over (say) YouTube and Bitcoin (or, hey, Ethereum) rather than hope for political change in the big orgs.

The big orgs _need_ to lie that the status of refugee is temporary, and not tied to deeper political problems. But the average refugee is in the field for 15 years, and lying about their status being temporary is great for fund raising and locating host governments who are willing to have them, but absolutely horrible for the refugees: endless years in boiling hot / freezing cold tents, no services for education and long term health care, and so on. It's just garbage: if it was you in one of those camps, you'd think you were in a prison camp.

So we stand in defiant opposition to those lies: refugee is a generation-long or longer condition in most cases, and we insist on cycle-of-life support for the people who will be spending an entire phase of life in these camps.

In the short run, this insistence on truth costs me the short term support of the (hugely corrupt) NGOs. In the long run, I hope it buys me recognition and credibility among the refugees and former refugees that I hope will be the backbone of hexayurt deployments in the fullness of time.

I have to speak the truth as I recognize it today, in order to be recognized as not having been full of nonsense by the refugees when they are assessing where to put their support later.

Hard calls all round. Thank you for your thoughtful comment!

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the reply sir! Yeah it's definitely a Hard Problem. The futurist in me does agree with you that eventually a form of crowd-sourcing will likely come along which helps dramatically reduce bottlenecks and waste in the overall aid pipeline while increasing transparency for individual donors. I think that this is likely to come about due to the onrushing incline in global smartphone penetration rate paired with donation systems may which leverage emerging technology around micro-transactions. The first wave of low-cost android smart-phones will hit the developing markets in the not too distant future, so suddenly everyone will have a camera, and I think once that happens it'll be a whole new ball game.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV3fgqhat60&t=16m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV3fgqhat60&t=16m) <\-- Dave McClure does a great job of explaining that phenomena and what it could mean to the IT startup ecosystem in the US and abroad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> (and of course the hexayurt is those hexagonal pod things you see all over Burning Man - I'm sure quite a few of you have camped in them and will be camping in one again in a couple of weeks, having the time of your lives!)

</comment><comment> bro-stick Neat designs; open source FTW.

Would love to go to BM, but my VW would probably dance its exhaust system off 50 miles out of town because it's "too cool" for emissions standards, right before deciding it's also time to nom-nom-nom the (nonadjustible) clutch. :'(

<comment><USER9> What kind of VW is that? I've got a '71 Super Beetle and a '71 Karmen Ghia. I'd love to find an old camper to go with them (but rust here in central Pennsylvania hasn't left many locally).

<comment> bro-stick '85 California Westy DeLuxe I got from Utah. I would go to the Westy / bus forums and look for VINs sold and maintained in dry areas or away from the coasts.</comment></comment></comment>


Red Star Linux (north korean Linux distro) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tgdaily.com/software-brief/48716-north-korean-linux-tips-up

<comment><AUTHOR> The original source, with lots of screenshots:

<http://ashen-rus.livejournal.com/4300.html>

<comment><USER2> That is very detailed. I have a limited understanding of Russian, but still managed to learn more about RSL than from any article about it I've seen so far on HN. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if the source is available as required by the GPL?</comment>


Ask HN: Who wants to build a decent wireframing tool? - <AUTHOR>

A few months back I wrote an article on how every single wireframing tool available sucks.
http://www.colmtuite.com/three-reasons-why-wireframing-tools-suck
The post was well received and I got a ton of emails from people who agreed with me. A few people even offered me money to build the tool.
A few minutes ago, I sat down to wireframe a new project and I'm already pissed off. I need a good wireframing tool. I would pay for one. Unfortunately, my Javascript chops are not up to scratch and I'm too busy with other projects for the next 6 months.
Anyone care to build this tool? <comment><USER2> I guess I could change WireframeApp to comply with most of your ideas. You could also do that, it's open source.

I read your blog post but I need more specifics. Could you send an email with more info?

Check it out: <https://github.com/eduardordm/wireframeapp>

Also available on the appstore (.99 cents) Sorry for not putting it there for free, but someone gave me 1-star rating and I got upset by it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey,

Thanks for the reply but I don't own an iPad. If I did, I wouldn't design or code on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The best tool out there for me is Adobe Illustrator. Nothing can beat this. I tryed all. I use AI then Bootstrap for fast coding prototype of my AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll take a stab at it after I am done my current project(which should be by the end of the month). I'll post the link back here when I am done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just shoot me an email instead. www.colmtuite.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you tried divshot?

<http://www.divshot.com/></comment>


OS X Hardening: Securing a Large Global Mac Fleet [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa13/os-x-hardening-securing-large-global-mac-fleet?

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of what the NSA produced for hardening OS X [1].

I find it some what strange that Apple hasn't updated their hardening guide since OS X 10.6 [2]

[1] - [http://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configura...](http://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml)

[2] - [https://ssl.apple.com/support/security/guides/](https://ssl.apple.com/support/security/guides/)</comment>


Arduino hardware hacking: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.tuxradar.com/content/arduino-hardware-hacking-part-1 <comment><USER2> Its been done better: <http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/>

<comment><USER3> I agree - that is a fantastic tutorial for a fantastic bit of kit.

I got an Arduino board for Christmas last year, and I have to say that the little blighter has to be one of the friendliest ways for software people to take their tinkering in to the physical world... although, that said, I just can't shake the nagging feeling that one day, for whatever reason, I'll just _have_ to implement Forth on it. Oh, I am so very, very weak.</comment></comment>


History of the Murphy Bed - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/article/the-making-of-murphys-bed-urbanization-and-the-rise-of-fold-down-furniture/ <comment><USER2> I have a very large home (3,200 sq ft) but with 3 adults, 3 kids we start to fill it up.* I wanted to be able to have guests without having a dedicated guest room. The Murphy bed was a perfect solution. Got a local furniture maker to make it out of hardwood for about $2,700. Pricey but was wrapped in with a renovation loan so made it doable.

The room is now the guest/meeting/sewing/fitness room. And is easy to toggle between the different uses. I really like it.

*that said, it's still very spacious feeling

<comment><USER3> I have a 1930 bungalow that originally had five bedrooms and a sleeping porch in 1200 sq ft. That would have supported 6+ people easily. More for anyone willing to sleep in the basement. Americans could stand an adjustment of how much space they need.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I'm currently sharing a studio basement in Vancouver with my gf, but if either of us was single it would be more suitable to just have a bedroom in a shared space. Living like students in terms of space shouldn't be looked at as temporary until you can afford a huge place with lots of stuff. One of my friends has a 3 bdr condo which she shares with 2 independent roommates and often her partner. Further to this, I'm often questioning my relationship to the dream of owning a place at all, as it often doesn't resonate with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read somewhere (found it: [https://www.wallbedsbywilding.com/blog/2017/01/06/wallbed- ma...](https://www.wallbedsbywilding.com/blog/2017/01/06/wallbed-mattress/)) that a Murphy bed should use a special mattress to avoid permanent damage to the mattress caused by the foam sliding down to the bottom due to gravity. Has anyone experienced such problems with a normal mattress used in a Murphy bed?

<comment><USER6> Isn't enough to just "rotate" the matress? (Something you should already do every season anyway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are so many apartments in SF that used to have Murphy beds in them but instead are now awkwardly-laid out "closets" or doorless "nooks." When I was looking for a place I would have appreciated a murphy bed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't miss the very cool expanding table later in the article. Direct link: [https://youtu.be/Mx_TceWHtas](https://youtu.be/Mx_TceWHtas)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always been sad they don't seem to make them for king beds. I'd definitely get one if they had it.

I also like the idea of a Murphy giant table where I can keep all my junk laying around but simply fold it up to get it out of sight.

<comment><USER10> There is a US company that makes king size wall bed systems. --> Sico, Inc. in Minnesota [1]. In some size I have seen them in hotel rooms. They seemed well made and operated smoothly. I have no idea about prices.

[1] <[https://www.sicoinc.com/en/product/room-makers-wallbed- syste...](https://www.sicoinc.com/en/product/room-makers-wallbed-system- vertical-fold/>)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Initial thoughts on my new web app: TweetFreeCars.com - <AUTHOR>

TweetFreeCars is designed to give away new cars and trucks to a few of my Twitter followers.  It incorporates the use of Twitter for marketing purposes and an online auction to select the winners of the giveaway cars.<p>The domain URL is http://TweetFreeCars.com and at the moment this redirects to a friend's development server. Please share your comments, questions and suggestions so I will know if I'm on the right track, thanks. <comment><USER2> A) It needs a serious hand from a real designer

B) I can't escape the... scammy feeling of the whole endeavor. "Non-profit"? "Donors" that have to "donate" $27 bucks to bid for the possibility to win $20,000 towards a car that you have to go out and actually buy at a dealership yourself?

It's nothing personal man, but I wouldn't touch this thing with a 50 foot pole, and if I caught my family using something like it, I'd probably smack them in the back of their head.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the design will improve with time, that's for sure.

Would a flat fee for participation sound better? How about "Pay $9 to bid in our next auction" ... and get away from the donations and non-profit approach?

The reason for selecting your own car is so you end up with exactly what you want, from the dealer you want to go to for maintenance and repairs. Do you think it's better to name a specific car, and therefore remove the winner's right to select his own car and dealer?

<comment><USER2> I think that you just need to clarify what's going on.

Calling something non-profit carries certain connotations; namely that the proceeds will somehow benefit a charity.

My assumption is that you're trying to spin this as being towards a car instead of a raffle to win $20k for legal or tax purposes. You may want to talk to a lawyer to see what other options are available to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I changed it from not-for-profit to commercial. It's still free for everyone to bid, with an optional $9 seat upgrade which moves you to the head of the line so you can bid sooner.

My lawyer says that since bidding is free and the payment is optional and only changes your position on the waiting list I should be okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> so you'll need $7.3 million a year just to make this idea work...do you honestly think there is that much potential there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all. I took out the part that says "we will run an auction every time we've accumulated enough donations" because I thought it was too much info to begin with. Plus I thought the 'once a day' plan might encourage more people to participate.

My real plan is simply to run an auction every time we've accumulated $22,000, so $20K for the winner's new car and $2K for the company. That's about as simple as it gets. Should I say this instead?

<comment><USER4> Be as transparent as possible. If it's not once a day, don't say that it is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've changed it to be very clear instead of suggesting future goals (such as one car per day) and I like it better this way. There's no more donations either, now it's a simple auction service with free bidding - and a $9 option for impatient folks who would rather bid in the next auction than wait their turn.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study finds drug in Pepcid-AC causes significant decrease in Covid-19 deaths - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20086694v1 <comment><USER2> Famotidine use in NY Covid-19 patients associated with 58% reduction in risk of death or intubation (22% vs. 10%)</comment>


Scientists close to a non-insulin cure for diabetes - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4232377.ece?CMP=SOC-Facebook-ttst-28_07_2014-471-0-0-0 <comment><USER2> I couldn't read the full Times article, this one is similar I assume. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/11151909/Cur...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science- news/11151909/Cure-for-Type-1-diabetes-imminent-after-Harvard-stem-cell- breakthrough.html)</comment>


Receding glacier causes Canadian river to vanish in four days - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/17/receding-glacier-causes-immense-canadian-river-to-vanish-in-four-days-climate-change <comment><USER2> There's another possibility of the event this author calls "river piracy." The Mississippi river is chronically at risk of being grabbed by the Atchafalaya River.

John McPhee wrote about this in 1987. [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya)

<comment><USER3> The Salton Sea is also an example. Its current incarnation was formed through accidental diversion of the Colorado River through an irrigation canal, and its continued existence is sustained through agricultural runoff from diverted Colorado River water. The Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf of Baja in most years.

[http://www.water.ca.gov/saltonsea/documents/history.cfm](http://www.water.ca.gov/saltonsea/documents/history.cfm)

<comment><USER4> > The Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf of Baja in most years.

As your source gets correct, the body of water in question is the Gulf of _California_ , not the "Gulf of Baja".

<comment><USER5> O/T: The Baja peninsula is great for camping except June-Aug, and I've spent ~15 weeks along [what we called] the Sea of Cortez. So, I went to wikipedia and apparently, it's gotten somewhat political. I can see both sides, but for other folks who like to lurk talk pages (the first thread is a discussion about what to call this body of water):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gulf_of_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gulf_of_California)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The calculations put chance of the piracy having occured due to natural variability at 0.5%. "So it's 99.5% that it occurred due to warming over the industrial era," said Best."

We need to train children in school to understand what statistical confidence means, so that we stop saying wrong things like this.

<comment><USER7> Why is it wrong?

If you reject the null hypothesis with a 99.5% chance it is not a type 1 error.

<comment><USER8> You can't say it's 99.5% due to global warming alone though. You can say 0.5% occurring by random chance but you can't just ascribe everything to one causal factor. Could be multi-factorial.

<comment><USER9> While the exact language in the quote is perhaps implying something, it only directly says the that the cause is warming during the industrial era. It doesn't provide any direct information about causal factors.

<comment><USER8> In the article: "So it's 99.5% that it occurred due to warming over the industrial era," said Best.

I don't have a problem with them saying for example - "We believe that the river changed due to warming over the industrial era"

I don't really have a problem with anything they conclude to be honest, I was just answering another guy's question. Shitty of HN users to give me negative points over it. I feel like I'm on Reddit again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This kind of thing has happened several times in China in recorded history with the Yellow River, to the point where sometimes the river has flowed into the ocean north of the Shandong peninsula and sometimes south of it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River#History)

<comment><USER11> Rivers re-route themselves frequently, the difference is cause (sediment for the Yellow River, melting glacier for the Slims).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was just looking at the Alsek valley on Google Earth the other day. It's (obviously) a water-level route from behind the mountains to the coast, and abuts the drainage divide with the Yukon.

The entire Alsek-Tatshenshini-Kaskawulsh-Dezadeash system's upper reaches occur in glacier-scoured valleys so ice damming or stream undercutting could greatly change the direction rivers flow. The northwest-southeast trench that includes Kluane Lake and continues beyond Haines Junction is the Shakwak Trench [4], created by the Denali fault.

Here's a map of the article's glacier and the surrounding area: [http://i.imgur.com/tL84Bd0.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/tL84Bd0.jpg) (edited from the park map [1])

A different scan from a 1985 topo map: [http://i.imgur.com/cVmWLlP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/cVmWLlP.jpg) (cropped from [2])

Meanwhile, 90 kilometers downriver (south) along the Kaskawulsh->Alsek, the west-to-east Lowell Glacier used to squish the north-to-south Alsek River against the far valley wall, damming it and causing a lake to extend upstream [3]-- the last time this happened was around 1850; the source estimates it'd take a year of being dammed for lake to extend up the Dezadeash to Haines Junction.

[1] [http://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn- np/yt/kluane/visit/~/media/088B38E...](http://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn- np/yt/kluane/visit/~/media/088B38E3A3D14CECA4035A16E0CEB0B7.ashx) [2] [http://www.canmaps.com/topo/nts250/med/115b.htm](http://www.canmaps.com/topo/nts250/med/115b.htm) [3] [http://www.geology.gov.yk.ca/lowell_glacier.html](http://www.geology.gov.yk.ca/lowell_glacier.html) [4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Yukon#Physical_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Yukon#Physical_geography)

</comment><comment><USER13> One problem with the way this is framed:

Rivers have historically _meandered._ They didn't have a set path. The modern expectation that rivers have a set path is one we tend to try to actively enforce.

Elsewhere in comments here, someone noted that the Salton Sea is similar. But if you read _Salt Dreams,_ Native Americans had oral history suggesting that there had been a lake there previously. Geological records agree with the oral history.

</comment><comment><USER14> Sweet, so what should we build to change this? Giant carbon-sucking machines, cube-sats pointed at glaciers? (planet labs is doing cool stuff in this space, including a project to count every tree on Earth every day). Solutions welcome!

<comment><USER15> At a low level:

\- Have fewer children

\- Burn fewer fossil fuels (less driving, flying, heating, cooling, more wearing sweaters at home in winter, etc)

\- Eat less meat

\- Develop technologies to create energy without fossil fuels

At a higher level

\- Stop associating consumption and material accumulation with happiness

\- Stop targeting growth (population, GDP, etc) as solution to so many problems

\- Take personal responsibility for what you do. Stop saying if others don't change my change won't make a difference. You are responsible for what you do even if others don't change.

At the top level:

\- Change you beliefs and goals so that instead of asking others, you find what you can do and do it. There is overwhelming amounts of information for what you can do already on the web. If you want to act, act.

<comment><USER16> I'm not convinced having fewer children will help anything and I wish people would stop repeating this. _People_ emit very few greenhouse gasses as a virtue of their existence, the extreme majority of them are emitted by lifestyle choices.

Even in developed countries the differences are stark. Qatar emits 54.7 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita, the United States 24.3 tons, Germany 12.3 tons, Switzerland 7.2 tons. A difference of almost 10x, with countries that all have similar standards of living! In a relatively undeveloped country like Burundi, the emissions are a mere 0.4 tons per capita[0]. A difference of literally 100x!

The best fix is a revenue-neutral carbon tax, with import tariffs on goods from countries that do not have such taxes (i.e. China). This internalizes the externalized costs of CO2 emissions, automatically encouraging development of more energy-efficient everything.

[0] Data from 2000, unfortunately, but the numbers have not changed in magnitude since then. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita)

<comment><USER14> Have either of you checked out Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change?"

[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

Would be cool to hear how it resonates (or not) with your perspectives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm thinking you're commenting on the wrong article ;)

Did you mean -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14131759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14131759)

<comment><USER18> Guys, I seriously do not know wtf happened. I never opened this "Receding glacier" thread. I was commenting on the Intel thread and my comment somehow ended up here. I got aware of it because of all these negative points which came quite unexpected.

Could it have been a glitch in the database?

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure what might've happened, but the web request logs show that comment being submitted to this thread. We've restored your karma and moved your comment to the right thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think you meant to put this comment in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14131759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14131759)

<comment><USER19> We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14132125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14132125) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Booo it's the ghost of global warming! Always threatening, never happening.

<comment><USER22> Why do you believe this?

<comment><USER22> Shame, it was flagged and removed. It was a comment that was highly sarcastic and critical of climate change, but I'd say no more sarcastic than any other comment we might find on here. Perhaps we could have benefited from learning why people continue to falsely believe climate change isn't real.

<comment><USER23> "Booo it's the ghost of global warming! Always threatening, never happening." is a worthless pointless comment and there's not going to be any useful discussion coming from it.

It's exactly the kind of comment that needs to be downvoted and flagged.

Also, flagging doesn't really remove anything. You can change the "showdead" setting in your options to see all flagged comments.

<comment><USER22> Oh, I didn't know that, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lol "immense" river 150m wide. Ok guardian readers, that may be an immense and scary river in the UK but canadians reserve words like immense for far larger things. At 15km this river may well be the largest thing ever seen by a brit, but canada has something like 50 rivers over 350 miles long. This is a glacial stream by the standards of The North, a part of canada bigger than all western europe. My local dog beach has a river 150m wide.

<comment><USER25> One writer describes 15km as immense and suddenly all Guardian readers are idiots?

For reference, the Thames is 350km long.

<comment><USER24> Idiots no, but given how UK publications so often describe geographical features one is left with the impression that the UK is sized like legoland. This is not a large river and, given the climate change aspect to the story, to desribe it as such is dishonest.

<comment><USER22> Hrm, I'd hate to say it like this but it's not always the length that matters. Did you read the bit about the volume of water that the pirating river increased by?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You're not as busy as you think. - <AUTHOR> http://colbyaley.com/busy.html

<comment><USER2> >Watch that TV show you've always wanted to. Take a walk for no reason at all. Go on that roller coaster once more. Call up your 89 year old grandma on the phone.

I'd say go for the second two options. From where I sit, there's little need to encourage most of us (in the U.S.) to watch that TV show.

Seriously though, this article hits a good point. People are always flying around like the world is ending when they really have tons of time to slow down a bit and treat other people with more respect/compassion.

Next time you're rude to a cashier because you had to stand in line 2 more minutes than you wanted to, just go ahead and slap yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Grafana 3.0 Beta Released - <AUTHOR> http://grafana.org/blog/2016/03/31/grafana-3-0-beta-released.html <comment><USER2> Wow, the support plans are expensive!

<comment><USER3> Yes, especially as you can only get support on a single instance with the $500/month developer plan. $4000/year minimum if you want support for your HA cluster.

One of the items in the pricing table is "Indemnification - Limit your liability from using Grafana".

Does anybody know what this means? What will having a higher-level support plan indemnify me from?

<comment><USER4> If Grafana is in breach of the reps and warranties in the SLA, indemnification means they're on the hook for the costs for any litigation that may result from the breach.

<comment><USER5> Maybe, maybe it's indemnification for patent claims for key technologies in the product, ie if somebody sues you becuase they claim to own IPR over something that graphana provides, then they will take over the costs of the litigation.

<comment><USER4> Some companies do. That's definitely a nasty pitfall that most customers would like to avoid. You'd have to review the specifics of the Grafana contract to find out exactly what is and is not covered. Patent infringement insurance isn't cheap, and they'd need it to cover their potential risk. With smaller SaaS startups, I can see how that might be an issue for them to cover.

[http://www.aberlawfirm.com/2014/04/15/combination- exception-...](http://www.aberlawfirm.com/2014/04/15/combination-exception- infringement/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really excited about some of these updates. Playlists were kind of useless without the ability to save them, and I'm looking forward to playing around with the new plugin model.

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent!!!</comment>


Vitamin found to delay aging process in organs - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/vitamin-found-to-delay-aging-process-in-organs-1.2885322 <comment><USER2> this seems like an advertisement

<comment><USER3> Well they did say the vitamin is present in milk; I doubt the dairy industry paid for this.</comment></comment>


I read about startups and the entrepreneur life a lot, but is it realistic? - <AUTHOR>

I'm just your average guy in a Network Engineer role, 9-5 etc, but I'm becoming increasingly dissatisfied by the post-industrialist working world, and how it sits with me. I don't want to work for a giant company that pivots slowly and has masses of red tape, but it seems like it's impossible to find a job (especially in New Zealand) at a start up. Your only real option is to create a start up, but how does one do that without money? Whilst being in a tiny country?
It's motivating and discouraging seeing all these posts about companies raising funding and doing all this great stuff, when I'm stuck in a 9-5 job that feels like I'm doomed to be stuck in for the rest of my life to be "comfortable." It's depressing, I don't want to be comfortable, I'd rather do cool shit, but where does one start?
There are plenty of motivational posts from start up founders along the lines of "just do what you love" and "quit your job, follow your dream" but this doesn't really seem realistic or even explain anything useful.
HN, how do I break out of the comfortable life before it's too late? <comment><USER2> You are looking for answers on here that I don't think anyone can give you. You either want it so bad that you will do anything to make it happen or you don't.

For instance, I am at work 9 hours per day 5 days per work every week, I have a wife, two dogs and twin boys that are only two months old. I have a mortgage and car payments, student loans, yet I find the time to work on my startup every night.

Lots of people have told me that it's not a good idea, that I won't make any money with it and I just won't listen.

Hope that helps you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow - that's commitment right there. I want 'it' pretty bad, but haven't found what that is just yet. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered moving out of New Zealand?

I'm not sure of your experience or personal life as it's not stated but if you've been working a steady 9-5 as a Network Engineer for a few years you likely have some money saved up I'd assume? What's stopping you from renting a small place in the U.S. or Europe (or even Australia?) and start looking for companies you'd want to work for?

On a side note I'm not going to pretend like I'm some huge risk taker, but from your post it seems at some point you're just going to have to leave your comfortable job and jump. What do you have to lose? If you continue down this path you'll only become more depressed. If you move onto trying to make cool shit and do well, then congrats! If you so happen to fail or hate it then there will always be another 9-5 for a big company to come back to.

Some food for thought, good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find every "entrepreneur" has a tipping point at which point his/her mind and body decide that it's time to take the leap. It's kind of like falling in love - you can't really explain the feeling but it's just there.

Having said that, in my humble opinion, the answer to "how do I break out of the comfortable life?" is: you just do it. Not quite sure how else to say it. If you believe in yourself, and you believe in what you're going to build/start/operate then trust me, your mind and body will scheme up a way to make sure you do it somehow.

Hang in there. If it's meant to be it will. Good luck man.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your problem is highlighted in the title of your thread. "I read... a lot". Build things, try stuff, and don't make excuses. New Zealand is small, but it is a unique market (New Zealander here). You don't need money to bang out a bit of code. It seems like you are afraid to try because building a startup seems so difficult, but you don't have to build a "startup", just build something. Things will flow from there. Good luck!</comment>